Transcribed from the June 1906 J. M. Dent edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
WILD WALES:
_The_ PEOPLE
LANGUAGE
& SCENERY
by GEORGE BORROW
INTRODUCTION
TALK ABOUT “WILD WALES”
BY
THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
I
WHY “WILD WALES” IS A SIMPLE ITINERARY
I have been invited by the editor of this series to say a few words upon
Borrow’s “Wild Wales.” The invitation has come to me, he says, partly
because during the latter days of Borrow’s life I had the privilege as a
very young man of enjoying his friendship, and partly because in my
story, “Aylwin,” and in my poem, “The Coming of Love,” I have shown
myself to be a true lover of Wales—a true lover, indeed, of most things
Cymric.
Let me begin by saying that although the book is an entirely worthy
compeer of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” and although like them it is
written in the autobiographic form, it belongs, as I propose to show
further on, to an entirely different form of narrative from those two
famous books. And it differs in this respect even from “The Bible in
Spain.” Unlike that splendid book, it is just a simple, uncoloured
record of a walking tour through the Principality. As in any other
itinerary, events in “Wild Wales” are depicted as they actually occurred,
enriched by none of that glamour in which Borrow loved to disport
himself. I remember once asking him why in this book he wrote an
autobiographic narrative so fundamentally different from “Lavengro” and
“The Romany Rye”—why he had made in this book none of those excursions
into the realms of fancy which form so charming a part of his famous
quasi-autobiographic narratives. It was entirely characteristic of him
that he remained silent as he walked rather sulkily by my side. To find
an answer to the queries, however, is not very difficult. Making a tour
as he did on this occasion in the company of eye-witnesses—eye-witnesses
of an extremely different temper from his own, eye-witnesses, moreover,
whom he specially wished to satisfy and please—his wife and
stepdaughter—he found it impossible to indulge in his bohemian
proclivities and equally impossible to give his readers any of those
romantic coincidences, those quaint arrangements of incidents to
illustrate theories of life, which illuminate his other works. The tour
was made in the summer and autumn of 1854; during the two or three years
following, he seems to have been working upon this record of it. The
book was announced for publication in 1857, but it was not until 1862
that his publisher, who had been so greatly disappointed by the reception
given to “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” took courage to offer it to the
public.
II
BORROW’S EQUIPMENT FOR WRITING UPON THE WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
In 1860 Borrow’s interest in Wales and Welsh literature had specially
been shown by the publication of his English version of “Gweledigaethau y
Bardd Cwsg,” a curious kind of allegory in the form of a vision, written
in the early years of the eighteenth century by a Welsh clergyman named
Ellis Wynne. The English reader of Borrow’s works will remember the
allusion made to this book. As might have been expected, Borrow’s
translation of this Welsh prose classic is not very trustworthy, and it
has been superseded by the translation of Mr. R. Gwyneddon Davies,
published in 1897. A characteristic matter connected with Borrow’s
translation is that in the _Quarterly Review_ for January 1861 he himself
reviewed it anonymously, and not without appreciation of its merits—a
method which may be recommended to those authors who are not in sympathy
with their reviewers. The article showed a great deal of what may be
called Borrovian knowledge of the Welsh language and Welsh literature,
and perhaps it is not ungenerous to say a good deal of Borrovian
ignorance too. For never was Nature’s love of whim in the fashioning of
individuals more delightfully exemplified than in the case of Borrow’s
irresistible desire for scholarship. Nothing whatever had he of the
temperament of the true scholar—nothing whatever of the philologist’s
endowment, and yet to be recognized as a scholar was the great ambitious
dream of his life. I wish I had time to compare his disquisitions upon
the Welsh language and literature in this article with a very rare little
book on the same subject, the “Sketch of the History of the Welsh
Language and Literature,” by a remarkable man as entirely forgotten now
as Borrow is well remembered—Thomas Watts of the British Museum. In the
one case we get nebulous speculation and fanciful induction based upon
Borrovian knowledge; in the other, a solid mass of real learning
accompanied by the smallest possible amount of speculation or fanciful
induction.
Borrow had a certain something of Mezzofanti’s prodigious memory for
words, accompanied by the great Italian’s lack of philological science.
It may be remembered in this connection that Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake in
his reminiscences in _Notes and Queries_ of a relation of mine, the late
Mr. James Orlando Watts, says that the learned recluse used to express a
good deal of humorous contempt of Borrow’s “method of learning languages
from dictionaries only,” without any grammatical knowledge. And these
strictures, if we consider them, will explain much in regard to the
philological disquisitions in “Lavengro,” “The Romany Rye,” and “Wild
Wales,” where the knowledge is all “dictionary knowledge.” But it was
not the shaky philology that caused “Wild Wales” to fall almost dead from
the press. What, then, was the cause? It arose from the fact, as I
hinted above, that “Wild Wales” belongs to a different kind of
autobiographic narrative from “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” and also,
if the truth must be said, from “The Bible in Spain.”
At the period when Borrow wrote this book the great and vigorous
renascence of the Cymric idea, the new and deep interest that Welshmen
are now taking in the preservation of the Welsh tongue, had not begun.
That Borrow did not live to this day, when Welsh is much more spoken
among the cultivated class than in his time, is to be lamented. With
regard to this revival, whatever may become of it (whether the Welsh
language can really be made to survive in the great linguistic struggle
for life, which will be one of the principal features of the twentieth
century), no one will deny that it is a language which from the poetic
side as well as from the historic ought to survive. If I tread here upon
dangerous ground, I may yet venture to say that one great obstacle
against the spread of the Welsh language beyond Wales is the strange
orthography. It is difficult for a person unacquainted with Welsh to
believe that the sounds represented by such awkward arrangements of
consonants as Welsh displays are otherwise than unmusical. And yet as a
matter of fact those sounds are very musical. It may be remarked here
that there is another language spoken in Europe which suffers from the
same misfortune in regard to phonetics—the Magyar language. I have
elsewhere in a novel, whose scene is partly laid in Hungary, made a
character speak of the disappointment expressed by the traveller in
Central Europe, when crossing the Austrian frontier into Hungary by rail,
at the sight of the Hungarian names with which the stations become
suddenly placarded. German is an ugly-looking language enough, but in
this respect it is nothing to the Hungarian. And yet it would be hard to
find in the whole of Europe a more musical tongue than that which is
represented by the uncouth consonantal syllables. It is not a little
striking too that between the Cymric race and the Magyar race there are
many points of likeness; one of these is the intense love of music
displayed by the two, another is the blending of poetic imagination with
practical sagacity. The Magyars have been called a race of lawyers, but
their love of law-points and litigation is not greater than that of the
Welsh, and yet how poetical is each race to the core!
With regard to languages—to survive will in the present century mean to
spread. Languages that do not spread will be crushed out. People who
talk glibly about the vast expansion of the English language all over the
world do not seem to realize that it is not the excellence of a tongue
which makes it survive and causes it to spread over the earth, but the
energy, military or commercial, of the people who speak it. It is not
the excellence of the tongue of Shakespeare and Milton that has carried
it all round the globe, but the busy energy of the commonplace people who
migrated for the most commonplace ends imaginable, and took the language
with them, and then increased and multiplied, building up new
English-speaking communities. It is for this reason that the English
language seems destined to become, if not the “universal language,” at
least the _lingua franca_ of the world. And nothing is more pathetic
than to observe the dread among Continental nations that this will be the
case in the future; and nothing is more humorous than the passionate
attempts to invent artificial languages, Volapük, Esperanto and what not,
to do the work that the English language is already doing all over the
sea, and will, apparently, soon be doing all over the land.
I dwell here upon this interesting subject in order to say that if Welsh
does not survive it will not be because it is not a fine language, but
simply because Destiny has decreed that it shall share the fate of many
another language spoken at present much more widely than Welsh.
III
IS NOT “WILD WALES” WRITTEN BY A CELT AND NOT BY AN ANGLO-SAXON?
In speaking of any one of Borrow’s books it is always necessary to say a
good deal about Borrow as a man. Besides being the very child of
Nature’s fantasy, he was the prince of literary egotists. Everything in
human life and everything in nature upon which he looked was enveloped in
a coloured atmosphere shed by the eccentric ego. That his love of Wales
was genuine there can be no doubt whatever. For this there was perhaps a
very special reason—a reason quite unrecognized by himself. I have
somewhere—but I forget where—remarked upon a curious and common mistake
in regard to Borrow—I mean the mistake of speaking of him as an East
Anglian. Very gratifying was this mistake to Borrow himself. When
walking with me in Richmond Park, or elsewhere, he would frequently stop,
look round and murmur, “Beautiful England!” and then begin to declare
eloquently that there was not in the world a country to be compared with
it, and that the race which lived in this beloved land was equally
incomparable in most things, especially in what he valued so
much—athleticism in all its forms. This was merely because England was
his place of birth. Born in East Anglia he was, to be sure; but Dr.
Johnson long ago held to the opinion that a man born in a stable need not
necessarily be described as a horse. When a man’s father is pure Cornish
(Celtic) and when his mother is mainly French, the fact of his having
been born in Norfolk is not enough to make him an East Anglian. By an
accident the regiment to which his father belonged was located in Norfolk
at the time of his birth, just as by an accident it might have been
located in Ireland or Scotland. In either of these cases he would have
been George Borrow the Celt, or rather, George Borrow the Unique, but not
a Scotsman—not an Irishman. It is the blood in a man’s veins, it is not
the spot in which he is born, that decides the question of his race.
Does one call the daughters of the Irishman, Patrick Bronte, who were
Celtic to the marrow, Yorkshire girls because they were born at Thornton?
Does one call Mr. Swinburne a Londoner because he, a Northumbrian by a
long line of ancestors, chanced to be born within a stone’s-throw of
Belgrave Square? Does one call the Rossettis Londoners, because it was
in London, and not in Italy, that they were born? To imagine any man
more Celtic than Borrow is impossible. Not a single East Anglian
characteristic exhibited by him do I remember—except perhaps his Norfolk
accent, and his very worthy and exemplary passion for “boiled leg of
mutton with turnips and caper sauce,” which he pronounced to be “food for
the gods.” It was his own way of writing and talking about himself,
however, that fostered if it did not originate the conception that Borrow
was an East Anglian. There is no more unreasonable, as there is no more
winsome, trait in human nature than the form of egotism which I will call
provincial patriotism—a quality of which Borrow was so full. No matter
what unlovely spot in any country had given Borrow birth, it would have
become in his eyes sanctified because of the all-important fact that it
gave birth to George Borrow, the “word-master.” Rest assured that had he
been a fenman he would have been as proud of his treeless, black-earthed
fen as he would have been proud of the Swiss mountains had his birthplace
chanced to be Switzerland. Rest assured that had he been born upon the
barren soil of Damaraland he would have been proud of his desert, as
proud as he would have been of any hilly district that had chanced to
have the honour of giving him birth. But being born in East Anglia, to
feel that he was the typical Anglo-Saxon of all Anglo-Saxons around him,
gave him a mighty joy. At “The Bald-faced Stag” his eloquent addresses,
to me and the little band of friends who loved him, about Norfolk ale
were inspired by the same cause. Compared to that East Anglian nectar
all other nectars were “swipes.” I know East Anglia well; few men know
it better—few men love it better. I say emphatically that a man more out
of sympathy with the East Anglian temperament never lived than he who
wished to be taken, and was taken, as the representative East Anglian.
Moreover, one very potent reason why he was such a failure in Norfolk—one
very potent reason why he was such a failure in his contact with the
Anglo-Saxon race generally—was this: he was a Celtic duckling hatched at
Dereham, who took himself for a veritable Norfolk chicken. It is no
wonder, therefore, that, without knowing it, his sympathy with the Celt,
especially the Cymric Celt, which he himself fully believed to be
philological, was racial.
The scenery of Wales had a very especial appeal for him, and no wonder;
for there is nothing like it in the world. Although I am familiar with
the Alps and the other mountain ranges of Europe in their wildest and
most beautiful recesses, it is with me as it was with Borrow: no hill
scenery has the peculiar witchery of that around Eryri. It is unique in
the scenery of Europe. Grander scenery there is on the Continent, no
doubt—much grander—and scenery more soft and lovely; but none in which
grandeur and loveliness meet and mingle in so fascinating a way as in
Wales. Moreover, to Borrow, as to all lovers of Wild Wales, beautiful as
its scenery is, it is the romantic associations of that scenery which
form so large a portion of its charm. For what race in Europe has a
story so poetic, so romantic, so pathetic as the Welsh? Over every inch
of the Principality hovers that great Spirit who walks the earth hand in
hand with his brother, the Spirit of Poetry, and throws a rainbow
radiance over it—the Spirit of Antiquity. Upon this Borrow and the
writer of these lines have often talked. No man ever felt more deeply
than he that part and parcel of the very life of man is the atmosphere in
which the Spirit of Antiquity lives. Irrational the sentiment about this
Spirit may be, if you will, but stifled it will never be. Physical
science strengthens rather than weakens the magical glamour of the Spirit
of Antiquity. Even the most advanced social science, try to hate him as
it may, cannot dim his glory. To the beloved poet of the
socialists—William Morris—he was as dear, as great and as strong as to
the most conservative poet that has ever lived. Those who express
wonderment that in these days there should be the old human playthings as
bright and captivating as ever—those who express wonderment at the
survival of all the delightful features of the old European
raree-show—have not realized the power of this Spirit and the power of
the sentiment about him. What is the use of telling us that even in
Grecian annals there is no kind of heroism recorded which you cannot
match in the histories of modern countries—even of new countries, such as
the United States and the Australias and Canada? What is the use of
telling us that the travels of Ulysses and of Jason are as nothing in
point of real romance compared with Captain Phillip’s voyage to the other
side of the world, when he led his little convict-laden fleet to Botany
Bay—a bay then as unknown almost as any bay in Laputa—that voyage which
resulted in the founding of a cluster of great nations any one of whose
mammoth millionaires could now buy up Ilium and the golden fleece
combined? The Spirit of Antiquity knows not that captain, and hence the
Spirit of Poetry has nothing to say about him. In a thousand years’
time, no doubt, these things may be as ripe for poetic treatment as the
voyage of the Argonauts, or the voyage of the Cymric Prince Madoc, who
the romantic lover of Wales, in spite of the arguments of Thomas
Stephens, will still believe sailed westward with his fleet and
discovered America before Columbus,—returned, and then sailed westward
again into eternity. Now every peak and cliff of Snowdonia, and every
matchless valley and dale of the land of the Druids, is very specially
beloved by the Spirit of Antiquity. The land of Druidism—the land of
that mysterious poetic religion which more than any other religion
expresses the very voice of Nature, is the land painted in this
delightful volume—Wild Wales. Compared with Druidism, all other
religious systems have a sort of commonplace and modern ring, even those
which preceded it by centuries. The scenic witchery of Wild Wales is
great, no doubt, but it is enormously intensified by the memory of the
heroic struggle of the unconquerable remnant of the ancient Britons with
the brutal, physical power of Roman and Saxon. The history of Wales is
an epic not to be surpassed for poetry and for romance. And even these
things did not comprise all the points in connection with Wild Wales that
delighted Borrow. For when the student of Welsh history and the lover of
Welsh scenery is brought into contact with the contemporary Welsh people,
the charm of the land does not fade, it is not fingered away by personal
contact: it is, indeed, augmented tenfold. I have in “Aylwin” dwelt upon
the poetry of Welsh common life, the passionate love of the Welsh people
for a tiny strip of Welsh soil, the religion of hearth and home, the
devotion to wife and children. In the Arvon edition of that book,
dedicated to a Welsh poet, I have said what I had previously often said
to Borrow, that, “although I have seen a good deal of the races of
Europe, I put the Cymric race in many ways at the top of them all. They
combine, as I think, the poetry, the music, the instinctive love of the
fine arts, and the humour of the other Celtic peoples with the
practicalness and bright-eyed sagacity of the very different race to
which they were so closely linked by circumstance—the race whom it is the
fashion to call the Anglo-Saxon. And as to the charm of the Welsh girls,
no one who knows them as you and I do, can fail to be struck by it
continually. Winifred Wynne I meant to be the typical Welsh girl as I
have found her—affectionate, warm-hearted, self-sacrificing and brave.”
IV
BORROW’S METHOD OF AUTOBIOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE COMPARED WITH THE METHODS OF
DEFOE, WILKIE COLLINS, DICKENS AND THE ABBÉ PRÉVOST
It seems almost necessary that in this desultory talk upon “Wild Wales” I
should, before proceeding any further, say a few words upon the book in
its relations to two of Borrow’s other autobiographic narratives,
“Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” and I do not know any literary subject
more suggestive of interesting criticism.
Although Borrow always acknowledged Defoe as his master, he had, of
course, qualities of his own that were as unlike Defoe’s qualities as
they were unlike those of any other writer. And as this speciality of
his has, so far as I know, never been discussed, I should have liked, had
space permitted, to give interest to my remarks upon “Wild Wales” by a
thorough comparison between Borrow’s imaginative works and Defoe’s
“Robinson Crusoe.” This is impossible in the space at my command. And
yet a few words upon the subject I cannot resist indulging in, for it
relates to the very core and central light of Borrow’s genius; and I may
now never have another opportunity of touching upon it.
I remember a long talk I once had with him upon the method of Defoe as
contrasted and compared with his own method in “Lavengro,” “The Romany
Rye,” and “Wild Wales,” and the method of other writers who adopt the
autobiographic form of fiction. He agreed with me that the most
successful of all stories in the autobiographic form is “Robinson
Crusoe,” although “Jane Eyre,” “David Copperfield” and “Great
Expectations” among English novels, and “Gil Blas” and “Manon Lescaut”
among French novels, are also autobiographic in form. It is of all forms
the most difficult. But its advantages, if they can be secured without
making too many artistic sacrifices, are enormous. Flexibility is, of
course, the one quality it lacks, but, lacking that, it cannot secure the
variety of picture and the breadth of movement which is the special
strength of the historic form.
The great pupils of Defoe—and by pupils I mean those writers who try to
give as much commonplace ἀπάτη as possible to new and striking
incidents—Edgar Poe, Wilkie Collins, Gaboriau and others, recognize the
immense aid given to illusion by adopting the autobiographic form.
The conversation upon this subject occurred in one of my rambles with
Borrow and Dr. Gordon Hake in Richmond Park, when I had been pointing out
to the former certain passages in “Robinson Crusoe” where Defoe adds
richness and piquancy to the incidents by making the reader believe that
these incidents will in the end have some deep influence, spiritual or
physical, upon the narrator himself.
Borrow was not a theorizer, and yet he took a quaint interest in other
people’s theorizings. He asked me to explain myself more fully. My
reply in substance was something like this: Although in “Robinson Crusoe”
the autobiographer is really introduced only to act as eye-witness for
the purpose of bringing out and authenticating the incidents of the
dramatic action, Defoe had the artistic craftiness to make it appear that
this was not so—to make it appear that the incidents are selected by
Crusoe in such a way as to exhibit and develop the emotions moving within
his own breast. Defoe’s _apparent_ object in writing the story was to
show the effect of a long solitude upon the human heart and mind; but it
was not so—it was simply to bring into fiction a series of incidents and
adventures of extraordinary interest and picturesqueness—incidents such
as did in part happen to Alexander Selkirk. But Defoe was a much greater
artist than he is generally credited with being, and he had sufficient of
the artistic instinct to know that, interesting as these external
incidents were in themselves, they could be made still more interesting
by humanizing them—by making it appear that they worked as a great
life-lesson for the man who experienced them, and that this was why the
man recorded them. Those moralizings of Crusoe upon the way in which the
disasters of his life came upon him as “judgments,” on account of his
running away from his parents, seem to humanize the wheels of
circumstance. They create in the reader’s mind the interest in the man’s
personality which Defoe wished to create.
In reply to my criticism, Borrow said, “May not the same be said of Le
Sage’s ‘Gil Blas’?”
And when I pointed out to him that there was a kind of kinship between
the two writers in this particular he asked me to indicate in “Lavengro”
and “The Romany Rye” such incidents in which Defoe’s method had been
followed by himself as had struck me. I pointed out several of them.
Borrow, as a rule, was not at all given to frank discussion of his own
artistic methods, indeed, he had a great deal of the instinct of the
literary _histrio_—more than I have ever seen in any other writer—but he
admitted that he had consciously in part and in part unconsciously
adopted Defoe’s method. The fact is, as I said to Borrow on that
occasion, and as I have since had an opportunity of saying more fully in
print, there are two kinds of autobiographic stories, and these two kinds
are, if properly examined, really more unlike each other than the
autobiographic form is unlike what is generally supposed to be its
antithesis—the historic form. In one kind of autobiographic story, of
which “Rob Roy” is a typical example, the narrator, though nominally the
protagonist, is really not much more than the passive eye-witness of the
dramatic action—not much more than the chorus to other characters who
govern, or at least influence, the main issue. Inasmuch as he is an
eye-witness of the dramatic action, he gives to it the authenticity of
direct testimony. Through him the narrative gains a commonplace ἀπάτη
such as is beyond the scope of the scattered forces of the historic form,
howsoever powerfully handled. By the first-hand testimony of the
eye-witness Frank Osbaldistone in Scott’s fascinating novel, the more
active characters, those who really control the main issue, Di Vernon,
Rashleigh Osbaldistone, Rob, and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, are painted in much
more vivid and much more authentic colours than the method of the
historic form would allow.
It is in the nature of things that this kind of autobiographic fiction,
howsoever strong may be the incidents, is not nearly so absorbing as is
the other kind I am going to instance, the psychological, to which
“Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” belong; for in literature, as in life,
the more interest we feel in the character, the more interest we feel in
what befalls the character. Unlike the kind of autobiographic fiction
typified by “Rob Roy,” in which, as I have said, the main issue is little
influenced and not at all controlled by the narrator but by other
characters, or, if not by other characters, by the wheels of
circumstance;—in the psychological kind of autobiographic fiction, the
personality of the narrator controls, or largely controls, the main issue
of the dramatic action. In other words, the incidents in the latter kind
of autobiographic fiction are selected and marshalled for the purpose of
declaring the character of the narrator. The most superb exemplars of
this kind of autobiographic narrative are stories which in all other
respects are extremely unlike Borrow’s—“Caleb Williams,” “Manon Lescaut,”
“Jane Eyre,” and “Villette.”
A year or two ago I recurred to this subject in some comments I made upon
some judgments of a well-known and admirable critic. I will take the
liberty of referring here to one or two of the remarks I then made, for
they seem to bear very directly upon Borrow’s method as compared with
Defoe’s. The same artistic instinct which we see in Defoe and in
Borrow’s quasi autobiographic work is exhibited by the Abbé Prévost in
“Manon Lescaut.” The real object of the last-mentioned story (which, it
will be remembered, is an episode in a much longer story) was to paint
vivid pictures of the careless life of Paris at the period of the story,
and especially to paint in vivid colours a kind of character which is
essentially peculiar to Paris, the light-hearted, good-natured, unheeding
_grisette_. But by making it appear that the incidents in Chevalier des
Grieux’s life are selected by him in order to show the effect of the
life-lesson upon himself, Prévost gives to every incident the piquancy
which properly belongs to this, the psychological form of autobiographic
fiction. It must, however, be admitted that at its best the
autobiographic form of fiction is rarely, very rarely, broad enough to be
a satisfactory form of art, even when, as in “The Woman in White,” the
story consists of a series of autobiographic narratives stitched
together. It was this difficulty which confronted Dickens when he wrote
“Bleak House.” When he was writing “David Copperfield” he had felt the
sweetness and fascination of writing in the autobiographic form, and had
seen the sweetness and fascination of reading it; but he also felt how
constricted the form is in regard to breadth, and it occurred to him that
he could combine the two forms—that he could give in the same book the
sweetness and the fascination and the authenticity of the autobiographic
form and the breadth and variety of the historic form. To bring into an
autobiographic narrative the complex and wide-spreading net that forms
the story of “Bleak House” was, of course, impossible, and so he mixed up
the chapters of Esther Summerson’s autobiographic narrative with chapters
of the history of the great Chancery suit and all that flowed from it.
In order to minimize as much as possible the confusion of so very
confused a scheme as this, he wrote the historic part of the book in the
present tense; and the result is the most oppressively-laboured novel
that was ever produced by a great novelist.
I have dwelt at length upon this subject because if I were asked to name
one of the greatest masters of the autobiographic form, in any language,
I should, I think, have to name Borrow. In one variety of that form he
gave us “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” in the other, “Wild Wales.”
V
WHY ARE THE WELSH GYPSIES IGNORED IN “WILD WALES”?
“Wild Wales” seems to have disappointed Borrovians because it ignores the
Welsh gypsies, the most superior branch of all the Romany race, except,
perhaps, the gypsy musicians of Hungary. And certainly it is curious to
speculate as to why he ignores them in that fashion. Readers of “The
Romany Rye” wonder why, after his adventure with Mrs. Herne and her
granddaughter, and his rescue by the Welshman, Peter Williams, on
reaching the Welsh border, Borrow kept his mouth closed. Several reasons
have occurred to me, one of which is that his knowledge of Welsh Romany
was of the shakiest kind. Another reason might have been that in “The
Romany Rye,” as much of his story as could be told in two volumes being
told, he abruptly broke off as he had broken off at the end of the third
volume of “Lavengro.” Or did the same reason that caused him to write,
in “Wild Wales,” an autobiographic narrative without any of the fantasies
and romantic ornamentation which did so much to win popularity for his
previous books, govern him when he decided to ignore the gypsies—the
presence of his wife and stepdaughter? There is a very wide class,
including indeed the whole of British Philistia, that cherishes a
positive racial aversion to the Romany—an aversion as strong as the
Russian aversion to the Jew.
Anyhow, it was very eccentric to write a book upon Wales and to ignore so
picturesque a feature of the subject as the Welsh gypsies. For, beyond
doubt, the finest specimens of the Romany race are—or were in Borrow’s
time—to be found in Wales. And here I cannot help saying
parenthetically, that as Borrow gave us no word about the Welsh Romanies
and their language, the work of Mr. Sampson, the greatest master of the
Welsh Romany that ever lived, is especially precious. So great is the
work of that admirable scholar upon the subject that he told me when I
last saw him that he was actually translating Omar Khayyam into Welsh
Romany! Although the Welsh gypsies have a much greater knowledge of
Welsh Romany than English gypsies have of English Romany, and are more
intelligent, I am a little sceptical, as I told him, as to the Welsh
Romanies taking that deep interest in the immortal quatrains which, it
seems, atheists and Christians agree in doing among the gorgios.
VI
CELT _v_ SAXON
Those who have seen much of the writing fraternity of London or Paris,
know that the great mass of authors, whether in prose or in verse, have
just as much and just as little individuality—have just as much and just
as little of any new and true personal accent, as the vast flock of human
sheep whose bleatings will soon drown all other voices over land and sea.
They have the peculiar instinct for putting their thoughts into written
words—that is all. This it is that makes Borrow such a memorable figure.
If ever a man had an accent of his own that man was he. What that accent
was I have tried to indicate here, in the remarks upon his method of
writing autobiographic fiction. Vanity can make all, even the most
cunning, simple on one side of their characters, but it made of Borrow a
veritable child.
If Tennyson may be accepted as the type of the man without guile, what
type does Borrow represent? In him guile and simplicity were blent in
what must have been the most whimsical amalgam of opposite qualities ever
seen on this planet. Let me give one instance out of a thousand of this.
Great as was his love of Wales and the Welsh, the Anglo-Saxonism—the John
Bullism which he fondly cherished in that Celtic bosom of his, was so
strong that whenever it came to pitting the prowess and the glories of
the Welshman against those of the Englishman, his championship of the
Cymric race would straightway vanish, and the claim of the Anglo-Saxon to
superiority would be proclaimed against all the opposition of the world.
This was especially so in regard to athletics, as was but natural, seeing
that he always felt himself to be an athlete first, a writing man
afterwards.
A favourite quotation of his was from Byron—
“One hates an author that’s _all author_—fellows
In foolscap uniforms turned up with ink.”
Frederick Sandys, a Norfolk man who knew him well, rarely spoke of Borrow
save as a master in the noble art of self-defence.
It was as a swimmer I first saw him—one of the strongest and hardiest
that ever rejoiced to buffet with wintry billows on the Norfolk coast.
And to the very last did his interest in swimming, sparring, running,
wrestling, jumping remain. If the Welshman would only have admitted that
in athletics the Englishman stands first—stands easily first among the
competitors of the world, he would have cheerfully admitted that the
Welshman made a good second. General Picton used to affirm that the
ideal—the topmost soldier in the world is a Welshman of five feet, eight
inches in height. Such a man as the six-feet-three giant of Dereham knew
well how to scorn such an assertion even though made by the great Picton
himself. But suppose Borrow had been told, as we have lately been told,
that the so-called “English archers” at Crecy and Agincourt were mainly
made up of Welshmen, what a flush would have overspread his hairless
cheek, what an indignant fire would have blazed from his eyes! Not even
his indignation on being told, as we would sometimes tell him at “The
Bald-faced Stag,” that Scottish Highlanders had proved themselves
superior to their English brothers-in-arms would have equalled his scorn
of such talk about Crecy and Agincourt—scenes of English prowess that he
was never tired of extolling.
But you had only to admit that Welshmen were superior to all others save
Englishmen in physical prowess, and Borrow’s championship of the Cymric
athlete could be as enthusiastic and even as aggressive as the best and
most self-assertive Welshman ever born in Arvon. Consequently I can but
regret that he did not live to see the great recrudescence of Cymric
energy which we are seeing at the present moment in “Cymru, gwlad y
gân,”—an energy which is declaring itself more vigorously every day, and
not merely in pure intellectual matters, not merely in political matters,
but equally in those same athletics which to Borrow were so important.
Sparring has gone out of fashion as much in the Principality as in
England and Scotland; but that which has succeeded it, football, has
taken a place in athleticism such as would have bewildered Borrow, as it
would have bewildered most of his contemporaries. What would he have
said, I wonder, had he been told that in this favourite twentieth-century
game the Welsh would surpass all others in these islands, and save the
honour of Great Britain? No one would have enjoyed witnessing the great
contest between the Welsh and the New Zealand athletes at the Cardiff
Arms Park on the 16th of last December with more gusto than the admirer
of English sparring and of the English pugilistic heroes, from Big Ben
Bryan to Tom Spring. No one would have been more exhilarated than he by
the song with which it opened—
“Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn anwyl i mi.” {0}
But one wonders what he would have said after the struggle was over—after
Wales’s latest triumph over the Saxon record of physical prowess. One
can imagine, perhaps, his mixed feelings had he been a witness of that
great athletic struggle which is going to be historic—the immortal
contest in which after England had succumbed entirely to the Colonials,
the honour of the old country was saved by Wales at the eleventh hour.
His cheek would have glowed with admiration of the exploits of the only
footballers whose names will be historic, and being historic must be
mentioned in connection with his own Welsh pages,—I mean the names of
Travers, of Bush, of Winfield, of Owen, of Jones, of Llewellyn, of Gabe,
of Nicholls, of Morgan, of Williams, of Hodges, of Harding, of Joseph,
and the names of the two Pritchards. Whatsoever might have been his
after-emotions when provincial patriotism began to assert itself, Borrow
would in that great hour of Cymric triumph have frankly admitted, I
think, that for once England’s honour was saved by Wales.
* * * * *
The following is a list of the works of George Borrow—
Faustus, His Life, Death [from the German of F. M. von Klinger], 1825;
Romantic Ballads [from the Danish of Öhlenschläger, and from the Kiempé
Viser], and miscellaneous pieces [from the Danish of Ewald and others],
1826; Targum, or Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and
Dialects, 1835; The Talisman of A. Pushkin, with other pieces [from
Russian and Polish], 1835; New Testament (Luke), Embéo e Majaró Lucas . . .
El Evangelio segun S. Lucas, traducido al Romani, 1837; The Bible in
Spain, 3 vols., 1843; The Zincali (Gypsies in Spain), 2 vols., 1841;
Lavengro, 1851; The Romany Rye, 2 vols., 1857; The Sleeping Bard,
translated from the Cambrian British, 1860; Wild Wales, 3 vols., 1862;
Romano Lavo-Lil: Word-Book of the Romany, 1874; Násr Al-Din, Khwājah, The
Turkish Jester [from the Turkish], 1884; Death of Balder [from the Danish
of Ewald], 1889.
The Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow, by Knapp (W.
I.), appeared in 1899.
ITINERARY
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Proposed Excursion 5
II. The Start, Peterborough, Birmingham 10
III. Chester 14
IV. Chester, Camp-meeting 19
V. Chester, Book-Stall, Wrexham 24
VI. Llangollen, the Dee 30
VII. Llangollen, Lodgings 34
VIII. The Robber’s Leap 37
IX. Llangollen, Pengwern 43
X. The Berwyn 48
XI. Pont Fadog 50
XII. Pont y Cysswllt 58
XIII. Llangollen, the Abbey of the Vale of the 64
Cross
XIV. Expedition to Ruthyn, the Column 69
XV. The Turf Tavern, Ruthyn 74
XVI. Return from Ruthyn, Agricola’s Hill 80
XVII. Llangollen, Plas Newydd, Llyn Ceiriog 84
XVIII. Llangollen, the Parish Clerk 92
XIX. Llangollen, the Vicar, the Pool of 100
Catherine Lingo, Robber’s Leap
XX. The Valley of Ceiriog, Huw Morris’s Chair, 107
Pont y Meibion
XXI. Pandy Teirw 116
XXII. Llangollen Fair 124
XXIII. Pont y Pandy, Glendower’s Mount, Corwen 125
XXIV. The Rock of Heroes, the Italian at the Inn 134
XXV. On the way to Bangor, the Irishman 142
XXVI. Pentre Voelas, the Conway, Swallow Falls, 149
Capel Curig
XXVII. Bangor 159
XXVIII. Menai bridges 165
XXIX. Snowdon, the Wyddfa 172
XXX. Gronwy Owen 179
XXXI. Anglesea, Pentraeth Coch 181
XXXII. Llanfair Mathafarn Eithaf, the Birthplace 186
of Gronwy Owen
XXXIII. The Inn at Pentraeth Coch 199
XXXIV. Conversation at the Inn 203
XXXV. A Brilliant Morning 206
XXXVI. Leaving Pentraeth Coch, Penmynnydd, Tomb 209
of Owen Tudor
XXXVII. Dyffryn Gaint 213
XXXVIII. The Inn at L— 225
XXXIX. Bound for Holy Head 231
XL. Caer Gybi 237
XLI. The Pier 240
XLII. Town of Holy Head, Pen Caer Gybi 244
XLIII. Bangor, Port Dyn Norwig, Caernarvon 251
XLIV. Pont Bettws, Llyn Cwellyn 255
XLV. Inn at Bethgelert 265
XLVI. The Valley of Gelert 267
XLVII. Tan y Bwlch, Festiniog 273
XLVIII. Mynydd Mawr and Mynydd Bach, Tref y Talcot 279
XLIX. Bala 288
L. The Tomen Bala 298
LI. Back at Llangollen 300
LII. Llangollen, Attempted Murder 304
LIII. Pen y Coed 308
LIV. Chirk 310
LV. Llangollen, Some of the Inhabitants 320
LVI. Llangollen, News of the Fall of Sebastopol 324
LVII. Pentré y Dwr 329
LVIII. Sunday at Llangollen 334
LIX. Llangollen, History of Twm O’r Nant 338
LX. Twm O’r Nant, his Interludes 348
LXI. Walk to Wrexham, Methodistical Volume 354
LXII. Rhiwabon Road 360
LXIII. Last Night at Llangollen 364
LXIV. Departure for South Wales 367
LXV. Inn at Llan Rhyadr 373
LXVI. Sycharth 378
LXVII. Llan Silin 384
LXVIII. Llan Silin Church, Tomb of Huw Morris 388
LXIX. Church of Llan Rhyadr 393
LXX. Rhyadr, Mountain Scenery 395
LXXI. Wild Moors, Arrival at Bala 398
LXXII. Bala, The White Lion 403
LXXIII. Llyn Tegid 409
LXXIV. Bala to Dinas Mawddwy 414
LXXV. Inn at Mallwydd 423
LXXVI. Mallwydd and its Church, Cemmaes 424
LXXVII. The Vale of Dyfi 428
LXXVIII. Machynlleth 432
LXXIX. Machynlleth, Historic Events 438
LXXX. Machynlleth to Esgyrn Hirion 442
LXXXI. The Mining Compting Room 450
LXXXII. Inn at Pont Erwyd 457
LXXXIII. Conversation at the inn and on the way to 465
the Devil’s Bridge
LXXXIV. The Devil’s Bridge 474
LXXXV. Dinner at the Hospice 477
LXXXVI. Dafydd Ab Gwilym 481
LXXXVII. Start for Plynlimmon 489
LXXXVIII. Plynlimmon, and back to the Devil’s Bridge 491
LXXXIX. Hafod 499
XC. Spytty Ystwyth 503
XCI. Strata Florida, burial-place of Dafydd Ab 507
Gwilym
XCII. Rhyd Fendigaid to Tregaron 512
XCIII. Tregaron Church 523
XCIV. Llan Ddewi Brefi 527
XCV. Lampeter to the Bridge of Twrch 532
XCVI. Llandovery 539
XCVII. Llandovery Church 544
XCVIII. Llandovery to Gutter Vawr 553
XCIX. Inn at Gutter Vawr 561
C. Gutter Vawr to Swansea 568
CI. Swansea 579
CII. Swansea to Neath 581
CIII. Town of Neath, the Glowing Mountain 583
CIV. Merthyr Tydvil 586
CV. Start for Caerfili 589
CVI. Pen y Glas to Caerfili 599
CVII. Caerfili 602
CVIII. Town of Newport 606
CIX. Arrival at Chepstow 616
CHAPTER I
Proposed Excursion—Knowledge of Welsh—Singular Groom—Harmonious
Distich—Welsh Pronunciation—Dafydd Ab Gwilym.
In the summer of the year 1854 myself, wife, and daughter determined upon
going into Wales, to pass a few months there. We are country people of a
corner of East Anglia, and, at the time of which I am speaking, had been
residing so long on our own little estate, that we had become tired of
the objects around us, and conceived that we should be all the better for
changing the scene for a short period. We were undetermined for some
time with respect to where we should go. I proposed Wales from the
first, but my wife and daughter, who have always had rather a hankering
after what is fashionable, said they thought it would be more advisable
to go to Harrowgate or Leamington. On my observing that those were
terrible places for expense, they replied that, though the price of corn
had of late been shamefully low, we had a spare hundred pounds or two in
our pockets, and could afford to pay for a little insight into
fashionable life. I told them that there was nothing I so much hated as
fashionable life, but that, as I was anything but a selfish person, I
would endeavour to stifle my abhorrence of it for a time, and attend them
either to Leamington or Harrowgate. By this speech I obtained my wish,
even as I knew I should, for my wife and daughter instantly observed,
that, after all, they thought we had better go into Wales, which, though
not so fashionable as either Leamington or Harrowgate, was a very nice
picturesque country, where, they had no doubt, they should get on very
well, more especially as I was acquainted with the Welsh language.
It was my knowledge of Welsh, such as it was, that made me desirous that
we should go to Wales, where there was a chance that I might turn it to
some little account. In my boyhood I had been something of a
philologist; had picked up some Latin and Greek at school; some Irish in
Ireland, where I had been with my father, who was in the army; and
subsequently whilst an articled clerk to the first solicitor in East
Anglia—indeed I may say the prince of all English solicitors—for he was a
gentleman, had learnt some Welsh, partly from books and partly from a
Welsh groom, whose acquaintance I had made. A queer groom he was, and
well deserving of having his portrait drawn. He might be about
forty-seven years of age, and about five feet eight inches in height; his
body was spare and wiry; his chest rather broad, and his arms remarkably
long; his legs were of the kind generally known as spindle-shanks, but
vigorous withal, for they carried his body with great agility; neck he
had none, at least that I ever observed; and his head was anything but
high, not measuring, I should think, more than four inches from the
bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead; his cheek-bones were high,
his eyes grey and deeply sunken in his face, with an expression in them,
partly sullen, and partly irascible; his complexion was indescribable;
the little hair which he had, which was almost entirely on the sides and
the back part of his head, was of an iron-grey hue. He wore a leather
hat on ordinary days, low at the crown, and with the side eaves turned
up. A dirty pepper and salt coat, a waistcoat which had once been red,
but which had lost its pristine colour, and looked brown; dirty yellow
leather breeches, grey worsted stockings, and high-lows. Surely I was
right when I said he was a very different groom to those of the present
day, whether Welsh or English? What say you, Sir Watkin? What say you,
my Lord of Exeter? He looked after the horses, and occasionally assisted
in the house of a person who lived at the end of an alley, in which the
office of the gentleman to whom I was articled was situated, and having
to pass by the door of the office half-a-dozen times in the day, he did
not fail to attract the notice of the clerks, who, sometimes
individually, sometimes by twos, sometimes by threes, or even more, not
unfrequently stood at the door, bareheaded—mis-spending the time which
was not legally their own. Sundry observations, none of them very
flattering, did the clerks and, amongst them, myself, make upon the
groom, as he passed and repassed, some of them direct, others somewhat
oblique. To these he made no reply save by looks, which had in them
something dangerous and menacing, and clenching without raising his
fists, which looked singularly hard and horny. At length a whisper ran
about the alley that the groom was a Welshman; this whisper much
increased the malice of my brother clerks against him, who were now
whenever he passed the door, and they happened to be there by twos or
threes, in the habit of saying something, as if by accident, against
Wales and Welshmen, and, individually or together, were in the habit of
shouting out “Taffy,” when he was at some distance from them, and his
back was turned, or regaling his ears with the harmonious and well-known
distich of “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief: Taffy came to my
house and stole a piece of beef.” It had, however, a very different
effect upon me. I was trying to learn Welsh, and the idea occurring to
me that the groom might be able to assist me in my pursuit, I instantly
lost all desire to torment him, and determined to do my best to scrape
acquaintance with him, and persuade him to give me what assistance he
could in Welsh. I succeeded; how I will not trouble the reader with
describing: he and I became great friends, and he taught me what Welsh he
could. In return for his instructions I persuaded my brother clerks to
leave off holloing after him, and to do nothing further to hurt his
feelings, which had been very deeply wounded, so much so, that after the
first two or three lessons he told me in confidence that on the morning
of the very day I first began to conciliate him he had come to the
resolution of doing one of two things, namely, either to hang himself
from the balk of the hayloft, or to give his master warning, both of
which things he told me he should have been very unwilling to do, more
particularly as he had a wife and family. He gave me lessons on Sunday
afternoons, at my father’s house, where he made his appearance very
respectably dressed, in a beaver hat, blue surtout, whitish waistcoat,
black trowsers and Wellingtons, all with a somewhat ancient look—the
Wellingtons I remember were slightly pieced at the sides—but all upon the
whole very respectable. I wished at first to persuade him to give me
lessons in the office, but could not succeed: “No, no, lad,” said he;
“catch me going in there: I would just as soon venture into a nest of
parcupines.” To translate from books I had already, to a certain degree,
taught myself, and at his first visit I discovered, and he himself
acknowledged, that at book Welsh I was stronger than himself, but I
learnt Welsh pronunciation from him, and to discourse a little in the
Welsh tongue. “Had you much difficulty in acquiring the sound of the
ll?” I think I hear the reader inquire. None whatever: the double l of
the Welsh is by no means the terrible guttural which English people
generally suppose it to be, being in reality a pretty liquid, exactly
resembling in sound the Spanish ll, the sound of which I had mastered
before commencing Welsh, and which is equivalent to the English lh; so
being able to pronounce llano I had of course no difficulty in
pronouncing Lluyd, which by the bye was the name of the groom.
I remember that I found the pronunciation of the Welsh far less difficult
than I had found the grammar, the most remarkable feature of which is the
mutation, under certain circumstances, of particular consonants, when
forming the initials of words. This feature I had observed in the Irish,
which I had then only learnt by ear.
But to return to the groom. He was really a remarkable character, and
taught me two or three things besides Welsh pronunciation; and to
discourse a little in Cumraeg. He had been a soldier in his youth, and
had served under Moore and Wellington in the Peninsular campaigns, and
from him I learnt the details of many a bloody field and bloodier storm,
of the sufferings of poor British soldiers, and the tyranny of haughty
British officers; more especially of the two commanders just mentioned,
the first of whom he swore was shot by his own soldiers, and the second
more frequently shot at by British than French. But it is not deemed a
matter of good taste to write about such low people as grooms, I shall
therefore dismiss him with no observation further than that after he had
visited me on Sunday afternoons for about a year he departed for his own
country with his wife, who was an Englishwoman, and his children, in
consequence of having been left a small freehold there by a distant
relation, and that I neither saw nor heard of him again.
But though I had lost my oral instructor I had still my silent ones,
namely, the Welsh books, and of these I made such use that before the
expiration of my clerkship I was able to read not only Welsh prose, but,
what was infinitely more difficult, Welsh poetry in any of the
four-and-twenty measures, and was well versed in the compositions of
various of the old Welsh bards, especially those of Dafydd ab Gwilym,
whom, since the time when I first became acquainted with his works, I
have always considered as the greatest poetical genius that has appeared
in Europe since the revival of literature.
After this exordium I think I may proceed to narrate the journey of
myself and family into Wales. As perhaps, however, it will be thought
that, though I have said quite enough about myself and a certain groom, I
have not said quite enough about my wife and daughter, I will add a
little more about them. Of my wife I will merely say that she is a
perfect paragon of wives—can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset,
and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia—of my
step-daughter—for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and
with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to
me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments,
knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the
Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery
German thing so-called—but the real Spanish guitar.